Discovery and Goal Setting

Discovery is the phase before the build. It is 2 to 6 weeks of structured analysis that turns “we are implementing AgriERP” into a specific, agreed, time-bound plan that everyone has signed up to. No configuration happens during discovery. No data gets migrated. No screens are designed. What happens, instead, is the work that makes everything afterwards possible: understanding the business as it actually is, understanding the business as it needs to become, and bridging the two with a phased roadmap that fits the business’s appetite, resources, and timeline.

This document describes how Folio3 runs discovery for an AgriERP implementation: the work that gets done, the people involved, the outputs produced, and what “discovery complete” looks like.

1. Business outcomes

Why outcomes come first

Every other choice in the implementation flows from the business outcomes. The scope, the phasing, the prioritisation of modules, the integration choices, the data-migration depth, all depend on what the business is actually trying to achieve. Without clear outcomes, the implementation tries to deliver everything to everyone and ends up delivering not much to anyone. With clear outcomes, the implementation team can make trade-off decisions consistently throughout the project.

How outcomes are captured

• Executive interviews: the CEO, CFO, COO, and other key leaders are interviewed separately, in depth. Each one tells the implementation team what they want the project to achieve, in their own words, with their own priorities.
• Operational interviews: the operational leaders (farm managers, packhouse manager, sales director, agronomist, head of HR) are interviewed in parallel. Their outcome priorities often differ from the executive view in instructive ways.
• Workshop synthesis: the interview results are synthesised into a single outcomes document. Themes emerge: what everyone agrees on, where leaders disagree, what is high priority vs. nice-to-have.
• Outcomes alignment workshop: the leadership team meets to discuss the synthesis, resolve disagreements, and agree on the final set of business outcomes for the implementation. The output is a signed document everyone has bought into.

Examples of well-formed business outcomes

Capability	What it means in practice
Vague aspiration	“Better visibility into operations.”
Well-formed outcome	“Real-time visibility of harvest progress, labor productivity, and quality acceptance per block, accessible to farm managers and head office on the same data, with reporting lag under 24 hours.”
Vague aspiration	“Improved profitability.”
Well-formed outcome	“Cost per tonne and margin per customer visible by week, with allocation rules agreed and the resulting margin numbers reconciling to the audited income statement at year end.”
Vague aspiration	“Faster financial close.”
Well-formed outcome	“Monthly close completed within 5 working days of month-end, vs. current 14 working days, with the same level of accuracy and audit support.”
Vague aspiration	“Reduce manual work.”
Well-formed outcome	“Eliminate manual data entry in payroll, accounts payable, and inventory adjustments by end of Phase 2, releasing approximately 60 person-hours per week for higher-value work.”

2. Gap analysis

How gap analysis works

• Current-state mapping: what systems and processes exist today, end to end. For finance: which system holds the GL, where AP and AR live, how data flows between them. For operations: how work is scheduled, how labor is captured, what records exist on paper. For supply chain: how inventory is tracked, how orders are received, how quality decisions are recorded.
• Future-state mapping: what the same processes will look like in AgriERP after implementation. Where automation replaces manual work, where structured records replace paper, where the data the business already captures becomes immediately useful instead of locked in spreadsheets.
• Gap identification: the differences between current and future, by process, by module, by integration. Each gap is captured with its size, its complexity, its impact on business outcomes, and the work needed to close it.
• Priority ranking: not every gap is equal. Some gaps have to close to deliver the outcomes; others are nice-to-have. Ranking the gaps by priority drives the phasing of the implementation.
• Scope decision: based on the outcomes, the gaps, and the available time and budget, the business decides which gaps will be closed in the implementation, which will be deferred to later phases, and which will not be addressed at all.

Common gap categories in agribusiness

Capability	What it means in practice
Process gaps	Where current processes are manual, paper-based, or split across multiple disconnected systems. Example: spray records on paper in the field, retyped into a spreadsheet, never reconciled to the actual inventory deducted.
Data gaps	Where the business does not currently capture data it needs. Example: labor hours captured at the day level but not the work-order level, so labor cost cannot be attributed to specific blocks.
Integration gaps	Where existing systems do not talk to each other. Example: bank statements arrive as PDFs and are matched manually to AR receipts, rather than flowing through banking integration.
Reporting gaps	Where the business cannot produce reports it needs. Example: cost per crop is unknown because allocation rules have never been formalised.
Compliance gaps	Where current operations do not produce the records buyers, regulators, or auditors require. Example: pesticide application records are incomplete or hard to retrieve when buyers audit.
Scale gaps	Where current systems will not handle planned growth. Example: a spreadsheet-based system that worked for 50 growers cannot handle the 500-grower expansion.

3. Infrastructure mapping

What infrastructure mapping covers

• Current technology landscape: what servers, databases, and applications the business runs today, where they are hosted, how they are connected, who supports them. The starting picture.
• Network and connectivity: the connectivity at each farm, packhouse, office, and remote site. Critical for an operation where field-based mobile devices need to sync data, and where remote sites may have unreliable internet.
• Device inventory: the smartphones, tablets, scanners, and desktops the workforce uses today. What will work with AgriERP as-is, what needs upgrading, what new devices are required (for harvest crews, supervisors, field officers).
• Identity and access: how users authenticate today (Active Directory, single sign-on, individual accounts), and how that will integrate with AgriERP.
• Existing integrations: the catalog of external systems the business is connected to today (banks, customs, buyers, partners), and which need to integrate with AgriERP after go-live.
• Security and compliance landscape: current security posture (data classification, backup practices, regulatory compliance) and the requirements AgriERP will inherit or replace.
• Data residency requirements: where data legally has to be stored (some countries require data residency for personal data, financial data, or government-program data). Drives cloud-region decisions.

Cloud vs. on-premise decision

AgriERP can run on a managed enterprise cloud platform, in a private cloud, or on-premise in the business’s own data centre. Discovery is where the right deployment model is decided, based on the business’s existing infrastructure, regulatory requirements, scale, and IT operating model.

Capability	What it means in practice
Managed cloud (most common)	Folio3 manages the cloud environment on the business’s behalf. Lowest IT overhead for the business; fastest to provision; scales elastically; best regional availability.
Customer-managed cloud	The business operates its own enterprise cloud account; Folio3 deploys AgriERP into it. Suitable for businesses with strong cloud expertise and existing investments.
Private cloud	Dedicated infrastructure in a managed data centre. Suitable for businesses with specific regulatory or security requirements that public cloud cannot meet.
On-premise	Servers in the business’s own facilities. Increasingly rare, but supported for businesses where data sovereignty or connectivity constraints require it. Higher operational burden on the business’s IT team.

4. Pain points and success metrics

Pain-point discovery

Pain points are different from business outcomes. Outcomes are what the business wants to achieve; pain points are what hurts about the current state. The two relate but are not the same: an outcome may address several pain points; a pain point may relate to several outcomes.

• Front-line interviews: Folio3 consultants spend time with the people doing the operational work, harvest supervisors, packhouse line workers, AR clerks, agronomists. The specific frictions they live with daily are the pain points.
• Process observation: consultants walk through actual processes end to end, observing how they really run vs. how they are described in documents. Real pain points often live in the gap between the two.
• Document and system review: the spreadsheets people use to fill gaps in the current system are a goldmine of pain-point evidence. Every workaround spreadsheet represents a hole in the current process.
• Customer and buyer feedback: where current operations create friction for buyers or growers (late invoices, quality disputes, missing documents), those frictions are pain points too.
• Quantification: where possible, pain points are quantified: hours per week spent, dollars per year lost, customer complaints per month, errors per period. The quantification supports the business case for the implementation and the priority decisions during scoping.

Success metrics

Every business outcome agreed in the discovery is paired with one or more success metrics: specific, measurable indicators that will show whether the outcome has been achieved. The metrics are agreed during discovery, baselined before go-live, and tracked after.

Capability	What it means in practice
Time-based metrics	Time to close monthly accounts. Time from harvest delivery to grower payment. Time to produce a buyer-required report. Time from order receipt to dispatch.
Accuracy metrics	Inventory accuracy at cycle count. Variance between book and physical inventory. Errors in invoices. Disputes per thousand transactions.
Volume metrics	Manual data entry hours per week. Spreadsheets in production use. Paper records generated. Emails sent for routine workflow.
Financial metrics	Cost per tonne by crop. Working capital position. DSO and DPO. Margin per customer. Quality reject rate.
Adoption metrics	Active users per week. Mobile-app sessions per worker per day. Reports run per manager per week. Time-to-decision in management meetings.
Compliance metrics	Audit findings. Regulatory submissions completed on time. Certification renewals completed on time. Records retrievable within agreed time.

5. The phased roadmap

What the roadmap contains

• Phase definitions: the specific phases for this implementation. Typically the standard phases described in the Implementation Roadmap document, adapted to the business’s specific scope and priorities.
• Phase scope: what is in scope and what is not, for each phase. Modules included, processes covered, integrations built, sites rolled out. Explicit scope; explicit out-of-scope; explicit deferred.
• Phase duration: the agreed duration for each phase, based on the discovery findings. The ranges in the standard methodology are refined to specific estimates based on the actual scope.
• Phase dependencies: what each phase depends on: prior phases, external events, business decisions, data availability. Dependencies are tracked so they can be managed.
• Phase go-live criteria: what “done” looks like for each phase. Specific, testable criteria, not subjective opinions. The system meets these criteria, the phase is live; it does not, the phase is not live.
• Resource plan: Folio3 resources, business resources, and any third-party resources required for each phase. Resource constraints are managed proactively, not discovered as crises.
• Risk register: the risks identified during discovery, with planned mitigations. New risks get added during implementation; the register is a living document.

Roadmap signoff

• Steering committee review: the roadmap is presented to the project steering committee. The committee reviews scope, timeline, cost, and resource implications, asks questions, and either signs off or requests adjustments.
• Executive signoff: the signed roadmap goes to the executive sponsor (CEO or COO) for final approval. The approval is the formal start of implementation.
• Communication to the broader organisation: with the roadmap signed off, the project communicates broadly: what is being done, why, in what sequence, with what impact on operational teams. Early communication reduces anxiety and builds buy-in.
• Implementation kickoff: the implementation kickoff meeting is held; Phase 1 begins. Discovery is complete; the build starts on a foundation everyone has signed up to.

Why time spent in discovery is time saved laterIt is tempting to compress discovery to “get started faster.” Every implementation that has tried this has paid the cost later: rework, surprise scope, miscommunication, decisions that get revisited monthly. Two to six weeks of structured discovery is much cheaper than six to twelve months of confused implementation.Discovery is also where trust is built. The business sees Folio3 actually understand their operation, ask the right questions, identify the real pain points, and propose a realistic path. The relationship that supports the next year of implementation is forged in these few weeks.

In summary

Discovery & Goal Setting is the 2 to 6 weeks that comes before any technical work. It captures the business outcomes (what the implementation should deliver), runs the gap analysis (the differences between current state and target state), maps the infrastructure (technology, network, devices, integrations, cloud or on-premise decisions), identifies the pain points and success metrics, and produces the phased roadmap that the rest of the implementation executes against. Folio3 facilitates and analyses; the business decides and signs off.